The day Mr. Robinson reached the throne room

Not everybody celebrated when the Spurs won the NBA title 10 years ago.

New York Knicks fans, as you would expect, were crushed.

I couldn’t help think about that the other day as I talked to a few former Spurs players about David Robinson’s impending induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Shortly after the Spurs won their first championship by beating the Knicks in the Game 5 of the 1999 NBA Finals, a celebration broke out in the visitors’ locker room at Madison Square Garden.

Media camped outside the door in the bowels of one of the most famous basketball arenas in the world heard all sorts of shouting and laughter.

The voice of Spurs guard Avery Johnson could be heard above it all.

Outside in the hallway, some of the most powerful people in New York weren’t amused. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, millionaire Donald Trump and a few other big wigs came walking past the visitors’ locker room, stone faced.

Nobody in the group said a word.

As I relayed the story to Johnson a few days ago, he strained to remember exactly what he told his teammates in the MSG locker room that day.

Johnson did say that he congratulated Robinson. He told his friend and longtime teammate that “it was worth the wait.”

“We had a team in ’95 that was 62-20 and lost to the (Houston) Rockets in the Western Conference finals,” Johnson said. “You don’t know from year to year what’s going to happen. You think you’re going to get back the next year, and we didn’t.”

Johnson said he reminded Robinson that not all superstars win championships. He told Robinson that, in effect, he had silenced the critics who had called him soft and questioned whether he would ever win a title.

“He had elevated himself to another level, and I just (felt) happy for him,” Johnson said. “All that he went through, all those different comments about him and his game and his style … (I was) just happy, more than anything, that he was on top of the throne.”

Robinson would win another championship in 2003, his last year as a Spur and his last year in the NBA.

The 7-foot-1 center from Navy, one of the greatest big men in NBA history, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sept. 11.